


and i'll give you my trust (if you give me yours)

by BadWolfGirl01



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Movie: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Originally Posted on Tumblr, POV Rey (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Rey Needs A Hug, Slight Canon Divergence, Star Wars: The Force Awakens Spoilers, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, The Force, The Force Ships It, Tumblr Prompt, force skype, mostly angst with a little bit of fluff at the end, mostly in the dialogue and the force skype scenes, rey's childhood is less shitty when she has a friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 00:05:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13282704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolfGirl01/pseuds/BadWolfGirl01
Summary: trust:/trəst/verb1.believe in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of.written for an anon on tumblr, prompt "do you trust me?"or: five times Ben asked Rey if she trusts him and one time he got an answer he didn't expect.





	and i'll give you my trust (if you give me yours)

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from a poem by Erin Hanson; i thought these four lines really work well with reylo:  
>  _we don't fight the same battles_  
>  but we fight the same war,  
> and i'll give you my trust,  
> if you give me yours

i.

The first time, it’s a quiet whispered question she almost doesn’t hear.

She’s a child, all scabbed, knobby knees and scarred skin and too-obvious ribs, the skin on her hands cracked from the harsh, dry desert winds and her lips chapped by the same. Barely ten years old, and already her hazel eyes are dark and heavy with a blank emptiness; it gets harder every day to drag her tiny, too-thin body over the shifting sands in search of wrecks that haven’t already been picked clean, in the hopes of earning even a quarter portion (a quarter portion that, every other day, she trades for parts to rebuild the rusted old speeder she’d found, half-buried in the sand).

She’s so  _tired._

The rags she’d found (well, stolen, technically, pulled them off of a dead body, but no one cares about dead people on Jakku) wrap around the lower half of her face, protecting her mouth and nose from the harsh sun and filtering out the dust in the air--well, sort of. They aren’t the  _greatest_  protection, but they’re far, far better than nothing.

(She remembers her first week on Jakku with piercing clarity, for all that she can’t remember how she got here or what her family looks like; five years old, maybe, and so little, unable to understand why Unkar Plutt had her, suddenly, why she had to listen to him. Why she had to go out into the hot sun and scavenge for metal. She’d learned, quickly enough, but that first week… dressed in nothing but an off-white tunic and a brown belt, she’d had no protection from the elements. By the end of the first week, her skin was blistered and red and  _screaming,_  radiating heat and sore to the touch. What little skin wasn’t sunburned had been scoured raw by the wind and sand, and she’d barely been able to walk. If it hadn’t been for the kindly woman who’d shared extra portions and given her some scraps to cover her arms with, she’d never have survived.)

Rey peers through the thin gap between her hood and the rags, staring at the rusty wreck in front of her. It’s an old X-wing--she recognizes the shape from the flight simulator--one wing completely detached from the main fuselage of the ship, poking up from the sand a couple meters away. It’s doubtful, really, given how small the ship is and how close (relatively speaking) to Niima Outpost it is, that there’s anything worth much still in the wreckage. But maybe, if she’s lucky, there’ll be something hidden inside the ship, where only someone small and skinny like her can get to it.

She leans her staff up against one of the still-attached wings, setting her cloth bag down beside it, and crawls underneath the X-wing. The process involves digging through the sand, wriggling her small body through the tiny gap between the engine and the sand dune, and by the time she makes it through the gap she’s covered in the tiny grains, from head to toe. There’s a little space, here, a pocket of air, shaded by the ship, and it’s blessedly cool. She pulls her knees up to her chest, leans back against the metal behind her, closes her eyes, a sudden wave of exhaustion dragging at her.

(She can’t sit for long; the line gets longer the later you are, and if you’re at the end of the line there might not be any portions left, no matter what you bring. But surely she can have a few moments to herself?)

Just sitting like this, it’s hard to ignore the awful dryness in her throat, her cracked and burning lips, her swollen tongue, the gnawing emptiness in her stomach. She’s been ignoring it too long, probably; she tries to count the days back, see when the last time she ate was, a vague sort of morbid curiosity prodding her, but everything is strangely fuzzy.

Maybe some water will help.

She opens her eyes (the world swims around her, and she braces herself, waits for everything to return to right) and tugs at the canteen hooked on her belt, pulling it out from where it’s partly covered in sand and fumbling with the lid. It takes a moment to get the bottle open, but she finally manages; she tilts her head back and puts the canteen to her lips, lifting the bottom up.

A scant couple swallows of water come out. It’s barely enough to wet her parched throat, and she shakes the canteen desperately. There  _has_  to be more water in there, she’s been careful, she’s been  _rationing_ it, has hardly drank anything all day…

“Who are you and what are you doing in my room?”

Rey jumps at the unexpected voice, dropping the canteen in her surprise; it hits the sand, still open, and she watches in horrified dismay as the last few precious droplets of water spill out onto the dry sand. “You made me spill my water!” she rasps out, sharply, more terrified than angry, shaking hands picking up the sandy canteen and brushing it off.

She lifts it to her lips again, shaking it again and again, but there’s nothing in it for real this time, and in frustration she hurls it at the strange boy sitting across from her, who winces and picks it up, frowning down at it.

… wait.

The boy sitting across from her?

He’s older than she is, with black hair and dark eyes, dressed in the cleanest tunic she’s ever seen, light brown, with matching pants. And he’s barefoot.

“How did you get under here?” she asks, licking her dry lips and swallowing, trying to get enough moisture in her mouth to speak. And then she frowns. “This is  _my_  wreck, go find your own!”

“What are you talking about?” the boy asks, looking up from her canteen.  _“You’re_  the one who appeared in my room.”

“I’m not in your room,” Rey says, shaking her head (and then sucking in a breath because  _that_  was a bad idea, everything’s spinning again). “I’m under a ship.”

The boy frowns at her. “Interesting,” he says, looking more closely at her. “What planet are you on?”

She frowns, licking her lips again. “Jakku,” she says. “Where else would I be?”

Something changes in his face, then, a flash of what she thinks might be understanding crossing his features. “Are… are you thirsty?” he asks, after a moment of watching her.

She stares at the boy, shocked. Just how stupid is he?  _“Duh.”_

“Okay, uh.” He looks around him, frowns, and then reaches out one hand. And she must be hallucinating, or something, because suddenly a full glass of water is flying through the air into his hand, and that’s not  _possible._  “Do you trust me?”

“No,” she says bluntly, because it’s true--she’s got no  _reason_  to trust him, after all. “Where’d you get the water?”

“I’m not really on Jakku,” he explains. “I don’t know what’s happening, but something’s connecting the two of us.”

She almost snaps at him, because that’s not an answer, and then she realizes it  _is_  an answer, in a way. “Oh,” she says, inadequately, unable to think up a better response.

“Um. Here,” he says, holding out the glass.

Rey freezes. There’s no  _way._  “All of it?” she breathes, staring at the glass in utter shock and awe. “But you’ll get thirsty!”

He shakes his head. “I can just get more, whenever I want to. Go on, take it.” And then he brightens, suddenly, holds up her canteen. “I can fill your canteen up, too. I mean, if you want.”

She doesn’t hesitate any longer, just reaches out and carefully takes the glass of water, lifting it to her lips and greedily gulping the liquid down, being sure not to spill a single drop.

“I’ll… be right back,” the boy says, and then he’s gone, but she doesn’t pay attention. The water is  _heavenly,_  pure and clean and wet and amazing, and she has to force herself to slow down.

There’s a sound.

She looks up from the glass clutched in her sweaty palms to see the boy again. He drops down onto the sand, sitting cross-legged in front of her; in one hand, he’s holding her canteen, and the other grips a rough cloth sack. He offers both to her.

“What’s in the bag?” she asks, taking the canteen and carefully clipping it back to her belt before reaching for the sack.

He shifts a little, looking down at his lap. “I, uh, thought you might be hungry.”

Rey stares at him for a moment, barely breathing, and then she bursts into tears.

“Uh, are you okay?” the boy tries nervously, dark eyes going wide. “Was it something I said? Um… oh,  _Maker.”_

She manages to laugh through the tears, taking a ragged breath and struggling to stop (crying is just wasting water, after all), reaches forward and takes the sack from him, peering inside before looking back up again. “No one’s ever given me anything like this before,” she gets out, hiccuping. There’s a smile stretching across her face, so wide her cheeks hurt, and she can’t seem to stop  _smiling._  “Thank you.”

He blushes, looking away again, but there’s a trace of a smile on his face, too. “It’s nothing,” he insists, and then, curiously, “What’s your name?”

“Rey,” she says, and then drinks the last of the water in the glass and hands it back to him.

“Rey,” he says, testing the name out. “That’s a nice name. I’m Ben.”

It’s her turn to blush and look away. “Hi, Ben,” she says quietly, looking back up at him. “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” Ben says, and then, just as suddenly as he appeared, he’s gone, fading out like he’d never even been there, the only sign she hasn’t imagined the entire thing the bag of food in her hands and the full canteen hanging on her hip.

 

ii.

She’s curled up on the metal ‘floor’ of her house, an old collapsed AT-AT, her speeder parked outside, when he appears again. It’s not the first time she’s seen Ben over the last three or so years since the first time, when he’d shown up out of nowhere underneath that wrecked X-wing and, she’d later realized, given her the gift of another day. He doesn’t show up every day, or even every other day, but at least once a week she’ll see him, even if it’s only for a couple minutes. He always has extra food and water in his room, now, for when they see each other; she’s fairly certain that without him, she would’ve died.

“Rey,” he says, and she jolts upright.

“Ben,” and she grins at him. “Hi.”

Ben smiles back at her, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes, and there’s something strangely serious in their depths. “I have a question.”

“Go on,” she says, a bit confused, but curious, too. What kind of question could he have that could be so serious?

“With all the old ships around, why haven’t you just stolen one and flown away?”

Rey frowns. How is it that even after three years of conversations, her one and only friend doesn’t know about her family? “I’m waiting for my family,” she explains, dragging her bony knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “They’ll come back for me, one day.”

“Rey, how long have you been on Jakku?” There’s something like worry in his eyes.

She shrugs. “I don’t know for sure, but I think… eight years?”

He looks surprised by this, although not completely. Like he’s almost  _expected_  such an answer, but he didn’t  _want_  to hear it, no matter how much he expected it. “Rey…”

“Don’t say it,” she pleads, because she can tell by the look in his eyes what he’s thinking, what he’s about to say. The same words she’s heard, over and over again, from those few people she’s bothered to tell her story to:  _they’re never coming back._  “They’re coming back. They  _are.”_

He frowns, doesn’t bother to hide his discontent, but he doesn’t say anything, acquiescing to her request. “How are you?” he asks, after a minute, watching her (he does that a lot, she’s noticed).

She shrugs. “About the same as usual, I guess. I got a whole portion a couple days ago!” she adds, lighting up at the memory.

“Really?” Ben asks with interest. “How’d you manage that?”

“Well, it was really strange, actually,” Rey starts. “I went out a lot farther than usual, and then I had some trouble with my baby, so I was late getting back to the outpost. I’d gotten a pretty good haul, but I was  _certain_  he wouldn’t give me anything--the farther back in line you are, the less likely you are to get anything.”

He nods. “I remember. What happened?”

She hesitates for a moment, wondering how to explain the desperation. “I don’t know, honestly,” she says, finally. “I just… it was the most valuable load I’d brought to him in a while. When I got up to the counter, I just looked him dead in the eye and made myself sound as stern as I could and told him  _this is worth one portion.”_  She frowns. “He didn’t even argue with me!”

Ben’s gone pale. “What did he say?” he asks, an unusual intensity in his voice and his eyes. “What  _exactly_  did he say?”

“He just agreed with me.  _This is worth one portion.”_  She shrugs. “Nothing special.”

“He just repeated what you said,” Ben says, flatly, some kind of shock rippling through his voice.

“Yeah.” She studies him for a minute. “What’s wrong, Ben?”

“I’m training to be a Jedi,” he says, abrupt.

“Yeah, I know, you told me that already.” She frowns, not understanding. “What does that have to do with how many portions Unkar Plutt gave me?”

“There’s this trick the Jedi have,” he explains, watching her face carefully, like he’s afraid she might bolt at any second. “They--we--can use the Force and make people do what we tell them to, believe what we want them to believe.”

Rey stares, mouth dropping open, before she comes to her senses, shakes herself. “But I’m not a Jedi, I can’t use the Force--”

“Rey,” Ben says, interrupting her in his eagerness, a rush of excitement crossing his face, “you mind tricked him. That’s the only explanation.”

She shakes her head, a bit of cold panic shocking her system. “No, that’s  _impossible,_  Ben, I’m not, I’m no one! I’m just a scavenger from Jakku, I’m not a Jedi, I’m not.”

“Breathe, Rey,” he says easily, moving closer to her, sitting down right in front of her, so close she could reach out and touch him. “This is good, listen to me for a minute. That means my Uncle Luke can train you, and you can come and live with us. As soon as I tell him about you, I  _know_  he’ll come and get you, and I’ll come with him.”

“I could meet you for real?”

He nods.

And for a long, shining moment, she imagines it: imagines Ben coming down the ramp of a ship, giving her a hug that he won’t disappear in the middle of, taking her by the hand and leading her away from her battered AT-AT for the last time--she’ll never have to scavenge again, she’ll have all the food and water she wants… and then she sighs, shakes her head. “I would  _love_  to,” and she hopes he can see the sincerity in her eyes. “But I have to wait for my family.”

“Rey, they aren’t coming back,” he says. “But you could have a  _new_  family, a real one that  _cares_  about you.  _Please.”_

His eyes  _burn_  with his intensity, with an emotion she can’t quite put a name to, and she swallows, staring at him, captivated by him. It’s everything she’s ever wanted, what he’s offering her: a family, and  _him._

Leaving Jakku isn’t as scary with him by her side.

Her gaze drifts away, to the wall, covered in scratches; all those lines, each one another day spent in waiting for parents that might never come back, another day spent among the hellish Jakku heat, rummaging through old ships for parts just so she can eat. It’s a lonely, practically pointless existence; without Ben’s company, without his  _friendship,_  she wouldn’t have survived. She wouldn’t have had a  _reason_  to.

“Please, Rey,” and his voice is softer, so much softer. “Do you trust me?”

Her eyes snap back to him. “You know I do,” she says, quiet, and she swallows hard. “How soon could you be here?”

A blindingly brilliant smile crosses his face and  _stays_  there at her question. “Tomorrow,” he says. “Or the day after, maybe, but probably tomorrow. I’ll tell Uncle Luke first thing in the morning.”

“Tomorrow, really?” Rey beams, unable to hold back the sudden rush of sheer happiness.

“I promise.”

He’s never promised before.

She finds she can’t help but trust that promise, believe it; of course he’ll keep the promise. After all, if he doesn’t show up, the next time their connection happens, she’ll yell at him. He  _will_  come. He will.

“You should get some sleep,” he says.

She nods. “So should you.”

“Goodnight, Rey,” he says, and suddenly there’s that stretching feeling that signals the end of their connection.

“Goodnight, Ben,” she says back, but she only gets about half of the sentence out before he’s gone.

Usually, Ben’s disappearance brings a sense of sadness, of emptiness, but not this time. Because this time, she knows when she’ll see him again.

Tomorrow.

She can’t wait.

Smiling happily to herself, Rey curls up on the floor again, pulling her doll close, and she falls asleep with images of herself and Ben flying through the stars in her head.

 

(He wakes up that night to a familiar humming, a green glow, the form of his uncle standing over his bed, and a bone-deep knowledge that he can never go to Jakku.)

 

(She waits, and waits, and waits some more, but he never comes, and she never sees him again.)

 

iii.

“You still want to kill me,” the masked figure says. Kylo Ren, that’s his name. Her eyes land on the lightsaber clipped to his belt; she remembers the easy, almost effortless way he’d restrained her with the Force. Remembers the vision she’d seen, the instant her fingers brushed the hilt of the Skywalker lightsaber.

(Remembers  _you mind tricked him, that’s the only explanation,_  and  _I promise_  and weeks spent waiting for a ship that never came before she finally gave up.)

“That’s what happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask,” Rey says, defiant, and she does not mention the Force. She won’t.

And then Kylo Ren reaches up with two black-gloved hands and unlatches and removes his mask, looking up at her. Dark eyes, black hair, light skin… there’s something undeniably  _familiar_  about him, so much so that it sets her teeth on edge, but she can’t place it.

“Tell me about the droid,” he says, so very calm and composed, rising to stand in front of her, placing his mask on a stand.

Nervousness runs through her, and she swallows, shaky. “He’s a BB unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator--”

Kylo Ren cuts her off before she can say any more. “He’s carrying a section of a navigational chart. We have the rest, recovered from the archives of the Empire. We need the last piece. And somehow, you convinced the droid to show it to you. You. A  _scavenger.”_

She jerks. How could he know that? She hasn’t said a word about who she is, hasn’t said  _anything,_  there’s no way…

“You know I can take whatever I want,” he murmurs, something silken and incredibly dangerous just beneath the surface of his voice, and suddenly she can barely breathe. He lifts one hand, brings it up to her face, hovering just above her temple, reaching out--

There’s a  _jerk_  and a shudder, and something intangible ripples through the air, a connection, almost, between the two of them, and it feels  _familiar,_  like she should know it. Kylo tenses, too, and then as quickly as the tension had come, it fades away, and he returns to his task.

He’s skilled.

It’s only an instant, and then she can  _feel_  him, in her mind, sifting through her memories like she’d dug through sand, looking for something--anything--worth enough for even a quarter portion. “You’re so lonely,” he breathes. “So afraid to leave…”

She jerks away, desperately, but the memory comes up anyway: the ocean, the island. And he sees it, because of  _course_  he does. “At night, desperate to sleep, you imagine an ocean,” he says. “I see it--I see the island…”

She’s crying now, desperate, because he’s getting closer, ever closer (scaling the insides of a star destroyer, searching for anything that looks like it might be worth something) and she won’t betray BB-8 like this (curled up in her house as a sandstorm batters the AT-AT within an inch of its life), she won’t betray the Resistance (marking another line in the wall, and she can’t stop her eyes from trailing along the years and years of scratches, and the ones marked with a little star, the days she saw Ben, and one hand reaches up and lightly traces the circled mark, the one she’d thought for sure would be her last day on Jakku).  _No,_  she won’t let him, she won’t, she  _won’t,_  (it’s late at night and she can’t sleep and suddenly the connection snaps true, and Ben is there, and he pulls her hair out of her usual three buns and braids it up in a crown around her head, and she leaves it in until it’s fallen almost entirely out).

(Han Solo, and  _are you offering me a job?_  and  _I’m thinking about it,_  and  _you’re offering me a job.)_

“And Han Solo,” Kylo says, and he’s almost gloating now. “You feel like he’s the father you never had.” He pauses a beat, then adds, “He would’ve disappointed you.”

Only there’s something beneath his eyes that doesn’t fit with the gloating tone at all.

“Get out of my head!” Rey snarls.

He just leans closer. “I know you’ve seen the map. It’s in there… and now you’ll give it to me.” He pauses, his voice changing just a shade. “Don’t be afraid. I feel it too.”

(She’s exhausted and still hungry, the quarter portion not even close to enough food, and thirsty, like always, curled up beneath the thread-thin blanket, her doll in her arms, staring into empty space, the old blank emptiness back. It’s been a week and he’s still not come, and to make matters worse the connection seems to have disappeared--her one and only friend, the only good thing in her life, gone just like that. How could she have been so  _stupid?_  He was never going to come--her family abandoned her for a reason, why would Ben want anything to do with her?  _But he promised,_  a little voice whispers, and she tells it to shut up, savagely, because promises mean  _nothing,_  she should know that by now--)

“I’m not giving you  _anything,”_  she snaps out, somehow jerking the memory away from him  _(that’s mine, you can’t have it!)_  and gritting her teeth.

“We’ll see.”

He can’t have anything more. She won’t  _let_  him.

Gritting her teeth, with the same doggedness and tenacity that helped her survive the Jakku desert, Rey builds a wall in her mind, and then she lets her instincts take over and she  _reaches._

And, quite suddenly, she’s in  _his head._

Flashes of memories drift by, but only one really stands out: Kylo, bent over a burnt and warped mask, begging for help, and there is such  _fear_  running through his mind, and she knows: she can use this.

“You’re afraid,” she breathes, “that you’ll never be as strong as Darth Vader.”

Kylo goes very still, then, freezes and stares at her, eyes widening just a little, and then he backs away, leaving her mind, his hand falling back to his side. And then he turns and walks away, out of her line of sight, and out the cell door--she can hear it hiss closed behind him.

There’s silence.

She concentrates on the restraints, flexes her wrists, but she can’t get free; she struggles for a minute, desperate, knowing instinctively that when Kylo Ren comes back, he  _will_  get the map from her head, and she will  _not_  give up the location of Luke Skywalker if she has to die--

_You mind tricked him. That’s the only explanation._

She takes a deep breath, smiling to herself, just a little, the beginnings of a plan forming in the center of her mind, where Kylo can’t touch.

She’s going to get out of here.

 

“Ben!” Han shouts, walking out onto the catwalk, and everything begins to fall into place.

It’s not  _possible,_  she thinks, or it shouldn’t be, but there’s no denying the evidence of her eyes and ears, and he  _does_  look familiar…

But her Ben never would’ve  _tortured_  her like that, tried to rip through her mind, invaded her memories; surely he would’ve recognized her, would’ve said something, maybe even tried to explain why he didn’t keep his promise all those years ago. No, this  _can’t_  be her Ben. It can’t be.

Besides, her Ben had been training to be a Jedi with his uncle Luke--

His uncle Luke.

No. It can’t be.

And then the conversation dies down, and Kylo (he’s  _not Ben)_  says something she can’t quite make out; Han responds, and then Kylo offers out his lightsaber. Han reaches out--

The last beam of sunlight fades away, and Rey glances over her shoulder out the hatch (the clouds are so thick, so dark, the sun entirely consumed, and were this a less serious situation she might marvel at the incredible beauty of  _snow)_  before looking back down at the catwalk.

She’s just in time to watch as Kylo’s fiery red lightsaber ignites through Han’s chest.

Chewie shouts, and so does Finn, but she’s frozen. “No,” she whispers, distantly, “no, no.” He can’t be dead, he can’t be, not  _Han Solo,_  he can’t just  _die,_  and the only thing she can really think of is that this just shows whoever Kylo Ren is, he’s  _not her Ben._

Her Ben would  _never_  have killed his own father.

Never.

 

 _You’re a monster,_  she’d called him, just moments ago, before he threw her into a tree and knocked her unconscious; now, slowly waking up, she wishes she could say it again. She climbs to her feet, slowly, wincing (she’s going to have some  _nasty_  bruises in the morning), and turns to see Kylo reaching for the Skywalker lightsaber.

Something inside her roars at the idea of his dark hands touching a weapon of Light; acting on instinct, she  _reaches,_  willing the lightsaber to come to her. There’s a humming in the air, in her bones, running just under her skin, pulsing in time with her erratic heartbeat, filling her lungs with every breath, dulling the pain of the bruises flowering all along her back (or maybe that’s the adrenaline at work, she’s not sure).

The lightsaber sails through the snow-covered trees, past Kylo’s face, slots perfectly into her outstretched hand; she stares at it in shock, for a moment (tenses, waiting for another vision), and then wraps both her hands around the hilt and looks up. He’s just as surprised as she is, maybe even more. (But he shouldn’t be. Her Ben  _wouldn’t_ be.)

He looks like her Ben.

The hair is longer than she remembers, and he’s filled out, developed muscle; his black clothes fit him very differently from the tan tunics and trousers she remembers him wearing every time they’d spoken, and his eyes are wild and wide. But, other than those few differences, he is exactly like Ben, down to his voice (even if the way he speaks is all  _wrong,_  the cadences so different from what she remembers).

She wonders what happened. What could have turned her Ben into this monster?

She ignites her lightsaber.

Kylo’s red blade flares to life, too, and she charges (the lightsaber is  _hard_ to handle, weighted very differently than her quarterstaff, but it’s similar enough she figures the forms are at least  _sort of_  the same), managing to even force him to give ground a little, until he recovers. Suddenly, she’s on the defensive, barely blocking his blows, retreating several paces at a time as the planet shakes itself to pieces around them.

There’s a cliff just behind her, a new one; he’s driving her towards it, hoping to trap her there, and she’s got no other choice but to let him. Rey turns halfway around, glancing back over her shoulder (she’s getting closer and closer to the edge of the cliff), looks back—to see a new expression on his face. The enraged madness is gone, at least momentarily, and he looks almost sane.

(He almost looks like  _Ben.)_

“Do you trust me?” he asks, quietly, and she can’t help but laugh.

“I stopped trusting you a  _long_ time ago,” she says viciously.

(Stopped trusting him, yes, but she  _never_ stopped waiting for him to come back.)

“Good,” he says. “Don’t trust me, Rey, don’t ever trust me.”

There’s something pleading in his eyes, like he’s a man grasping desperately at a few precious moments of lucidity in the center of his insanity, and then it fades away in an instant, replaced by that same wild fury from before. He lunges at her again, and she barely catches his crimson blade on her glowing blue one; his face is only a few inches from hers, the light from their locked blades reflected in his dark eyes.

“You need a teacher!” he shouts over the tumultuous noise of the planet falling to bits around them and the screaming of their lightsabers. “I can show you the ways of the Force!”

“The Force,” she breathes out, closing her eyes, and it’s the Ben of eight, nine, ten years ago, telling her tales about the Force, the Jedi of old, as she digs through shattered ships or curls up with her head in his lap, trying to fall asleep.

 _Oh, Ben,_  she thinks but does not dare say.

She opens her eyes, suddenly calm, and she  _breathes,_  slowly, steadily.

She knows what she has to do.

 

 

iv.

The first time the connection comes back, she’s just woken up  _(tomorrow. at dawn. three lessons);_  the familiar (but nearly forgotten) humming jolts through the air, and she jerks her head around to see Kylo sitting on an overturned basket. There’s a wicked black burn mark on his cheek from her lightsaber.

She supposes she should feel proud or satisfied that she’d obviously managed to really  _injure_  him, but she doesn’t. She’s just hollow.

Even the anger she’s been trying to muster up ever since Han’s death on Starkiller is gone.

Rey’s eyes flicker down to the blaster on the low table beside the bed (she wonders, almost absently, if the bolts would even get through, or if they would just go right through him like he’s not even there, and would he even react). She could shoot him, right now, maybe end him forever. Kill Kylo Ren, one of the major enemies of the Resistance.

 _(Are you thirsty?_  There’s understanding on his face when he hands her the glass of water, more clean water than she’s ever seen in her life.  _I thought you might be hungry.)_

She leaves the blaster where it is.

“So we’re doing this again?” she finally asks, tired and worn.

He shrugs one shoulder. “Looks like it.” A pause, and then: “You know I have no more control over this than you do. I don’t know why it stopped for so long, or why it’s started again.”

“I know,” she says. And she shouldn’t ask, she shouldn’t, because it doesn’t matter anymore, all these years later, and Kylo Ren is  _not_  the same as her Ben, but… the words slip out anyway. “Why didn’t you come?”

He stares at her for a long time before he answers. “Ask Skywalker what happened the night I destroyed his temple.”

And then he fades away.

 

“I went to confront him, and he turned on me,” Luke says, and Rey sits in silence, listening, and she thinks  _liar._

 

“Did he tell you what happened?”

“He lied,” she says, softly. (Because she’d  _known_  Ben, then, and he never would have turned, he had been so certain, even when he struggled with the darkness inside him.)

Kylo (he’s not Ben, not Ben) looks a bit surprised that she’d draw such a conclusion, but he nods. “He did.”

And then he  _shoves_  the memory of that night into her mind.

(It comes in snippets. Flashes of a dream about a girl seeing the ocean for the first time; he leads her by the hand to the beach.  _Do you trust me? I won’t let you drown,_  he murmurs, and then the humming of a lightsaber and a feeling of  _intrusion_  jerks him out of the dream. He frowns, blinks the sleep from his eyes, stares at the shadows on the wall, washed in soft green, and then he rolls over and there’s his  _uncle,_  his  _master,_  staring down at him and holding his lightsaber; he  _reaches,_  summoning his lightsaber to his palm, lights the blue blade and blocks his master’s strike, and at the same time he lifts his other hand and pulls the roof of his room tumbling down around him--)

The memory cuts off there, and she’s left shaken.

“That was the same night I made my promise,” he says softly, intense, and she stares up into his dark eyes and sees an ancient pain there. “I wanted to come.”

“You could still have come,” she breathes, drawn closer to him by some sort of instinct.

He shakes his head. “There is no use in what-ifs and could-have-beens.” He takes a step towards her. “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. That’s the only way to become who you were born to be.”

Before she has a chance to respond, the connection closes, and he fades away.

 

“I thought I’d find answers here,” Rey says, dripping wet, a woven blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a fire crackling merrily in front of her. “But there’s just nothing. I felt so  _alone.”_

He looks at her, that same quiet softness in his eyes (and she recognizes  _Ben,_  now, in those eyes, still hiding under all those layers of  _Kylo Ren)._  “You’re not alone.”

 _You never have been,_  his eyes say.

 _(But I was,_  she wants to say.  _You said you’d be my family and you left me on Jakku.)_

“Neither are you,” she says.  _I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you when you needed me the most._

He smiles, just the slightest curve of his lips.

And suddenly, she remembers.

 _(Whoever you’re waiting for on Jakku, they’re never coming back. But there’s someone who still could._  Maz is so sure, so calm, so still.

 _Rey, they’re not coming back. But you could have a new family, a real one that cares about you,_  and she’s never seen Ben so earnest and certain before.)

 _Don’t fail me, Ben,_  she pleads silently, and then, slow, cautious, she reaches out one hand.

He stares at her for a long time, so long she feels the faintly flickering spark of hope start to die, and then he pulls off one black leather glove and extends his hand.

Their fingertips brush, and static electricity leaps between their fingers, shocks her; she sucks in a sharp breath. (She can  _feel_  his skin sliding against hers, rough and calloused even though he wears gloves, and she knows for absolute sure she has  _never_  felt anything like this before.)

“Stop!”

Luke Skywalker bursts into the hut, all wide and wild eyes (and she thinks of Kylo in the forest on Starkiller and can’t help but see the similarities), and with one curled hand he brings the entire hut crashing down around her and--just her.

Ben is gone.

Gone, and his last sight of her with the same awful look in his uncle’s eyes as that night, and--

A surge of anger flares up, hot enough to burn away the shock of the cold rain; Rey leaps to her feet and grabs her quarterstaff, leaps forward. “Did you try to kill him?” she shouts, bearing down on him with her quarterstaff raised. “Did you  _create_  Kylo Ren?”

Luke doesn’t answer, just reaches and summons a length of metal to his hands (and she guesses that means he’s opened himself up to the Force again), blocking her strikes, twisting, twirling the metal, and she backs him up to the steps leading up to his hut before he smacks her with his weapon and uses the distraction to yank her quarterstaff from her hands and toss it away.

She doesn’t hesitate.

Her right hand shoots out; the lightsaber flies true, and the instant the somehow-warm metal brushes her palm she thumbs the blade to vivid blue life and storms forward again.

Luke staggers back, fear widening his eyes, and he trips over the first of the uneven stone stairs and lands hard on his back. Rey stands over him, threatening, and she puts the full weight of her anger and her command of the Force behind her words. “Tell the truth.”

His face falls, and suddenly he isn’t afraid anymore; he’s just a weary old man who has seen far too much in his lifetime. “I looked into his mind and I saw such Darkness,” he says, and his voice is broken and jagged-edged. “He would bring ruin and destruction to  _everything I loved._  And for a moment, I thought I could prevent it,” and the moment of raw emotion fades back into sheer heavy exhaustion. “The moment passed, and I was left with shame, and with consequence. And the last thing I saw were the eyes of a frightened boy whose master had betrayed him.”

“You failed him by thinking his choice was already made,” she says, shaken to the core by the depth of feeling in his words. “It wasn’t. There is still light left in him. If I go to him, Ben Solo  _will_  turn.”  _He has to,_  she doesn’t say.

“Rey, don’t,” Luke pleads, anguish in his eyes. “This is not going to go the way you think!”

She powers down the lightsaber, offers him the burnished silver casing, a wordless compromise; he stares at it, at her, and then he shakes his head--a just-as-silent refusal--and she pulls the saber back to her.

“Then he is our last hope.”

And she turns, grabs her staff and her bag, and she doesn’t look back.

 

“You don’t have to do this.”

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look at her, and she swallows. “Ben,” and  _now_  his eyes jerk to her, lock onto her face with a startling intensity, “you will not bow before Snoke. You’ll turn.” She looks pleadingly up at him, drops her voice to a near-whisper. “I’ll help you.”

He steps towards her, stares down at her, swallows (she can’t keep her gaze from flickering briefly to his lips). “Rey,” he murmurs, dark and soft as sin, and his voice caresses her name in a way that sends shivers down her spine. “Do you trust me?”

She  _shouldn’t._  She really shouldn’t, not after everything, after Han, after his invasion of her mind (her ten-year-old self screams at her to stop, to run, to hide, before he hurts her).

She shouldn’t, but she does.

“Yes,” she breathes out.

He smiles, barely-there but  _genuine,_  and then the turbolift slows and she turns to face the door, and Supreme Leader Snoke.

 

If Kylo’s invasion of her mind had hurt, Snoke’s is the worst kind of agony imaginable.

The pain almost feels like those first awful sunburns had, only in her  _mind,_  where she can’t ignore the hurt; every memory  _screams_  at her, torn-edged and raw, floating loosely around her brain, and she can barely put them in some semblance of order. She is no match for Snoke’s strength, even though she  _tries,_  and he rips the location of Ahch-to from her without much of a fight.

But then he reaches for her memories of Ben, and she screams.

 _Those are MINE!_  She hurls the words at the Darkness in her head and she wraps herself in all the pain and fear and hunger and thirst and longing and bitterness, the happiness and joy and the will to  _live,_  and she roars at the Darkness, a wave of pure fury and strength, and she screams again as she throws him out of her mind.

The Force-bonds holding her immobile in the air abruptly snap, and she falls to the floor, accompanied by the awful sound of Snoke’s laughter. Even as she rolls over, scrambling to stand, the hideous cackling echoes in her ears, burns like acid through her mind, and suddenly she’s being held just a few centimeters above the mirrored black floor, facing Ben.

Snoke is still talking in the background, something about killing her; she focuses the shreds of her ruined consciousness on the dark figure in front of her, standing so elegantly, so poised, his lightsaber held lightly in one black-gloved hand, and somehow she finds his eyes. “Ben…”

He stares down at her, solemn and grave, face intent, resolved. “I know what I have to do.”

 _No,_  she wants to say,  _Ben, please, I trusted you,_  but she can’t seem to form the words. (She was wrong all this time, wrong, wrong, and she shouldn’t feel betrayed but she  _does--)_

A lightsaber ignites in a crackle of static, but it isn’t the red saber in front of her.

The  _pressure_  holding her releases with a hitch and a jerk, and she watches in utter shock as Ben (it  _is_  Ben) lifts the hand at his side and crooks two fingers; she doesn’t have to look over her shoulder to  _feel_  her lightsaber soaring through the air, and she reaches up with one hand at the last second and catches the hilt firmly, slowly climbs to her feet.

And  _now_  the red blade roars to life.

Rey holds his gaze for another long moment (how  _could_  she have doubted him?) and then, in wordless accord, they spin back to back, and the real fight begins.

 

“Ben?”

There’s blood trickling down her arm where the Praetorian guard’s blade had cut her, and the bruises from the fight on Starkiller ache with every breath, but she’s alive, standing under her own power, surrounded by bodies encased in red plastoid.

And the cannons are still firing.

“It’s time for old things to die,” he says in an entirely different sort of soft, turning back from Snoke’s throne and facing her.

And she  _knows._

“Rey, I want you to join me,” and there’s so much raw hope and longing on his face it’s painful.

“Don’t do this, Ben,” she begs.  _“Please_  don’t go this way.”

“You’re still holding  _on!”_  He stalks towards her (every movement is that of a predator, but she doesn’t feel like his prey), the hand not holding her lightsaber clenched in a fist. “Let go! Join me, and we can bring a  _new order_  to the galaxy.” And then he stops, just a few steps away, something softening in his gaze. “Do you want to know who your parents are? Or have you known all along?”

She shakes her head, wordless, some distant part of her aware of the tears streaming down her face but unable to stop.  _Don’t go, Ben,_  she thinks fiercely,  _don’t leave me alone with Kylo, please,_  but she can’t find her voice and she’s not sure the words would do anything anyway.

“You do know,” he says, pinning her in place with his gaze. “Say it.  _Say it.”_

“T-they were nobody,” she chokes out, sobbing now, pain like a knife in her heart, twisting deeper with every ragged breath.

“They were  _filthy junk traders_  who sold you off for  _drinking money,”_  he snarls out. “They’re dead in a pauper’s grave on Jakku.”

“No,” she whispers, trembling, because it can’t be true (it is true).

“You have no place in this story,” he says, taking another step towards her, so intense, so driven. “You come from nothing. You  _are_  nothing.”

She sucks in a breath, the awful cold realization (finally accepting a fact she’s known all her life) soaking through her bones, and she can’t speak (there’s nothing to say).

And then his voice changes. “But not to me.”

 _(You could have a new family, a real one that_ cares _about you.)_

“Join me,” and he stretches out one gloved hand, his voice a mere whisper, jagged with a desperately vulnerable longing, and she thinks she sees barely-controlled tears in his eyes when he breathes out, “Please?”

He’s almost begging.

 _(I’m being torn apart,_  she remembers him telling his father, so much anguished agony in those four words, and she thinks she knows how he felt.)

Her hand reaches out to him almost on instinct, and she’s so,  _so_  close to taking his hand (another Resistance transport explodes in the window behind her), she wants nothing more than to fall into his arms and never leave--

Finn’s face flashes through her mind.  _We’ll see each other again,_  she’d told him before she left, no matter that he was unconscious at the time.

She sees Leia, so exhausted and war-weary and worn so, so thin around the edges, frayed to the breaking point, and how despite the death the general has already witnessed in her life, the loss of Han still ripped open a raw, bleeding gash in her very soul (the Force practically  _screamed_  with all her pain, all her guilt; she carries the death of an entire  _world_  in her heart, the loss of her twin brother, because he may still be alive but Luke is as good as dead to her now, her failure to save her son, and now Han is gone--her precious smuggler flyboy who drove her insane and who her love for is as great as the space Alderaan had occupied, once upon a time, the man who tore away the fabric of her being and carried it with him when he left, when  _she_  drove him away).

And Rey knows, heartbroken, that she cannot stay.

 

She wakes up before he does, among the burning red curtains; the massive destroyer lists worryingly beneath her feet as she stands, and she knows she needs to leave before someone else comes.

She takes a moment to locate the broken pieces of the old Skywalker lightsaber, finds them on the mirrored black floor near Ben’s unconscious body. His lightsaber casing is on the floor not far away, and after a second of hesitation she pulls it to her hand, crossing the room and kneeling next to him.

There’s a hook on his belt; she clips his lightsaber to it and sits back on her heels, studying him for a moment. He’s grown up (they both have), he’s been warped and twisted, but at the very center of him he’s still her first friend. He’s still her Ben. Tears threaten at the corners of her eyes and she dashes them away with one hand. The other hand, she brings to his face, pushing the dark hair away from his closed eyes; she traces the line of his scar, the bones of his cheeks, and she swallows hard.

“Oh, Ben,” she starts, her voice breaking. “I’m  _so_  sorry.”

She knows she needs to leave, but she can’t resist leaning over and pressing her lips to his forehead, and then to his cheek, and she’s crying again as she pulls back. “I’ll wait for you, Ben,” she promises, her voice shaking. “I know all about waiting.”

And then she gathers the broken pieces of the lightsaber into her hands and leaves, with one last longing look back over her shoulder.

 

 

v.

He’s in hiding somewhere he won’t say; the Resistance is holed up in the old Rebel base on Dantooine, but Rey isn’t about to tell him that, either.

Just in case.

It’s been almost nine months since the  _Supremacy,_  since the Battle of Crait. Despite his less-than-flattering first act as Supreme Leader, Ben has been a surprisingly good leader; however, no matter how good of a leader he is, Hux still has the military, and that fact is what finally allows him to stage a successful coup, about six months later.

Ben makes it out alive, although injured, and he tells her about the coup the next time their bond connects them. He also tells her that he’s in hiding somewhere the people don’t know his name or his face, but when she presses for more information, he refuses to give it.

She’s not quite sure why.

She still asks, sometimes, even though it’s been three months, in the hopes that he’ll finally give in and tell her, so she can--do what? Go to him, leave the Resistance without its Jedi?

She  _wants_  to, but since when has wanting ever been a factor?

Rey’s curled up in the  _Falcon’s_  cockpit, staring out the viewscreen and imagining she can see the stars beyond it (imagining herself flying free through space, far far away from all the burdens and responsibilities and the  _legend_  of being the Jedi of the Resistance), when Ben appears for the first time in a week.

There hasn’t been this long of a gap between their conversations since the bond restarted; though she’d pretended it meant nothing, the lack of contact had worried her, and it’s more of a relief than it should be to see Ben in the copilot’s chair.

“Rey,” he says, flicking his eyes over her, as though to reassure himself that she’s safe.

“Ben,” she answers, and despite herself she does the same. “Where have you been?”

He shrugs. “I guess the Force didn’t want to play comm.” He looks fine, although the circles under his eyes are more pronounced then they had been, like he hasn’t been sleeping. “How is the lightsaber going?”

She grimaces, running one hand over her face. “The kyber crystal is cracked,” she says. “I think I could rebuild the casing, but I need a new crystal, and I don’t have one.” She frowns, then, dropping her hand and looking at him again. “You wouldn’t happen to know where to find one, would you?”

He considers her for a long time. “Do you trust me?”

She nods.

“Where is the Resistance based right now?” he asks, leaning forward a little. “Where are you?”

She hesitates, bites her lip--it’s been made very clear to her that she’s not to give him any information (Leia had been against that rule, but it was the only way the rest of the Resistance’s command would agree to let Rey have her freedom, after the bond’s existence had been discovered), after all, in case he uses it against them, and the location of the base is the biggest secret of them all, but…

_Do you trust me?_

“Dantooine,” she says softly.

He’s surprised. “The old Rebellion base?”

“Yeah,” she confirms.

He nods to himself, considering. “I know where Snoke kept his cache of lightsaber crystals,” he says, finally, “but you have to be the one to pick the crystal out.” A pause, and then: “I miss you, Rey,” and there’s so much emotion hiding just under the surface of his words.

“Come to the Resistance,” she says impulsively, leaning forward. “I miss you, Leia misses you… we could use your knowledge of the First Order, Ben. The Resistance  _needs_  you.” She hesitates, then adds,  _“I_  need you.”

“I’m tired of fighting,” Ben says quietly. “But I don’t know how to do anything else.”

“Come to the Resistance,” she says again. “Help us, help  _me,_  to finish this war. And then--maybe we can learn another way of life, together.”

“Rey--”

The bond cuts off before he can finish his sentence, but she’d seen the look in his eyes.

And maybe she’s just hoping, maybe she’s just  _wanting,_  but she uncurls her limbs, pulls herself to her feet, and leaves the  _Falcon_ in search of Leia.

(Because, sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with  _wanting.)_

  
\+ i.

The funeral is a somber affair.

It seems like the entire galaxy had gathered to pay their respects to Leia Organa, respected princess, general, and senator; as her last living relative and the Jedi of the Resistance, respectively, Ben and Rey both had been obligated to speak to the crowds of people--those who were attending the funeral in person, and the millions watching on screens across the galaxy.

For the two (highly) introverted Force-users, it’d been more nerve-wracking than a battle.

The ceremony is finally over, though, and they’re allowed to slip off; after all, with the victory celebrations resuming, no one’s really paying attention anymore. The demise of the First Order is too big of an occasion to  _not_  celebrate. All across the galaxy, billions of sentients welcome the return of peace with fireworks and  _copious_  amounts of alcohol. The end of the war is a good thing, it  _is,_  Rey knows--so why does she feel so… lost?

“I don’t know what to do now,” she finally admits, turning to look at the dark-clad figure walking beside her. “It just feels…  _wrong,_  to not be at war. Is that bad?”

“It’s not surprising,” he says, and then shrugs. “As for the  _morality_  of it… I’m not the right person to ask.”

Rey lets out a sigh, reaching for his hand and squeezing it tightly. “I can’t believe she’s gone,” she whispers, throat going tight with all the tears she’d choked back during the speech. “It just… it doesn’t seem  _possible._  She’s  _Leia Organa,_  she…” Her voice trails off, and she shakes her head.

“I know,” Ben says, stopping and pulling her into his arms. “I… regret how much of our time I wasted.”

She can’t keep the tears from falling at that. “You came home,” she manages to choke out, pulling back just enough to look up at him. “You came home, Ben, that’s all she wanted.”

He smiles halfheartedly at that, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I suppose,” he says, and she realizes suddenly he’s trying not to cry.

She realizes something else, too. “You’re the last.”

“What?”

“The last Skywalker,” she elaborates, wiping her tears on her sleeve and taking a shuddering breath, stretching for some kind of composure.

Understanding dawns across his face, and something else, too. “I don’t have to be,” he murmurs, so quietly she can’t be certain she’s heard him right. He brings one hand up and cups her cheek, tucking a few loose strands of hair behind her ear. “Do you trust me?”

Something warm blooms in her chest, even amid all the sorrow and grief, and she smiles. “I love you.”

His face goes slack, awe in his dark eyes, and the arm around her waist tightens. “I love you too,” he breathes, and then he leans in and kisses her.

 

“What did you mean,  _I don’t have to be?”_  she asks, later, curled up against his side in their bunk on the  _Falcon._

Ben shifts, propping himself up on one elbow and looking down at her. “Run away with me,” he says. “We’ll travel the galaxy and find Force-sensitives and teach them the balance.” He hesitates. “Once, I promised you a new family, and… well, it’s not much of a family right now, but the Skywalker family is yours, if you want it.”

Rey goes still, staring up at him, as the import of his words sinks in; and then she laughs. “Ben Solo, did you just propose?”

He blushes and looks away, fingers playing with her hair. “You don’t have to accept--”

“Of  _course_  I do,” she breathes, and then she rolls her eyes. “You know, you could’ve just asked the  _normal_  way.”

“Now, Rey,” he says in mock affront, “when have I  _ever_  been normal?”

From somewhere across the room, a porg squawks.

_Fin_

**Author's Note:**

> i'm pretty sure that end scene is literally the fluffiest thing i have ever written or will ever write in my entire life.
> 
> this fic also happens to be the longest single-chapter/oneshot i've ever written!
> 
> please leave a comment and let me know what you think :)
> 
> (i'm @reyloismyobsession on tumblr, come follow me!)


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